The National Trust for Historic Preservation announced this week the 2022 Pocantico Fellow. Jordan Ryan, architectural historian, archivist, and principal owner of The History Concierge LLC, from Indianapolis, IN will be the sixth recipient of this fellowship.

Funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Pocantico fellowship provides professionals with two weeks of dedicated time for a defined project with significant benefit to the preservation field. Recipients spend their time at the Marcel Breuer House located at The Pocantico Center in Tarrytown, NY.

The projects focus on a topic of key importance to the preservation field today, such as social justice, diversity and inclusion, housing, equitable development, climate action, re-imagining historic sites, preservation trades and workforce development, or telling a fuller history. Projects should also help to advance one or more of the seven goals surfaced through the National Impact Agenda: Leading the Change Together.

Through their interdisciplinary and inclusive approach to preservation, Ryan’s work has raised the visibility of the built environment of marginalized communities in Indianapolis. They recently founded the consulting firm The History Concierge, where they offer services such as research, programs and tours, exhibit curation, archiving, digitization, oral histories, and other scholarly and creative writing projects.

Previously, Ryan has held a variety of cultural resource management and museum positions, and recently managed an architectural archive and large Indianapolis-based collections project. They have a master’s degree in public history from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and a bachelor’s degree in art history from Herron School of Art and Design. Their scholarship revolves around the built environment, urban planning, historic preservation, marginalized communities, hostile architecture, and LGBTQ historic sites.

“The Pocantico Fellowship is truly a unique opportunity we are able to provide to support leading-edge preservation research in partnership with Rockefeller Brothers Fund,” said Katherine Malone-France, the National Trust’s Chief Preservation Officer. “This year’s recipient, Jordan Ryan, has been an ardent advocate for documenting and protecting historic places that tell our full history, and we are thrilled to offer them this chance to spend two weeks of dedicated time to work on a project that offers a model for protecting and interpreting resources that are associated with sites of stigma and trauma, in this case mental illness in the early days of psychiatry. We look forward to how Jordan’s time at the Marcel Breuer House will shape the understanding of the stories and legacies of Central State Hospital and impact the larger preservation field.”

In addition to this year’s fellowship, Ryan received the 2021 American Express Aspire Award at the National Trust’s annual conference, PastForward. This award recognizes emerging preservation leaders who demonstrate innovative thinking and achievement in advancing historic preservation in their local, state, or national communities.

Previous recipients of the Pocantico Fellowship have been:

• Adrian Scott Fine, Senior Director of Advocacy, Los Angeles Conservancy (2015)
• Edgar Garcia, Assistant General Manager, El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument Department (2016)
• Barbara Wyatt, Historian and Landscape Specialist, National Park Service (2017)
• John H. Sprinkle Jr., Lecturer, School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at the University of Maryland and Deputy Director, Federal Preservation Institute, National Park Service (2018)
• Marilyn Kaplan, Architect and Founder, Preservation Architecture (2019)

Due to the global pandemic, the program did not take place in 2020 and 2021. You can learn more about additional professional development opportunities at the National Trust at Forum.SavingPlaces.org/conferences-training.

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The Pocantico Center, a singular place to gather, discover and grow, is the community-facing extension of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, bringing people together through a robust slate of conferences, artist residencies, tours, performances, and educational programs. rbf.org/pocantico | @pocanticocenter